Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The NRA is short sighted, foolish, and evil - AGAINSTILL

Cross-posted from penigma; by way of explanation, the annual 'Penny' (good penny or bad penny, our 2 cents worth) is an annual acknowledgement/ blog award.

WW I pennies with bullet holes in them
considered 'trench art'

The NRA consistently demonstrates their failed level of limited thinking and lack of moral values in their political and policy positions. They ONLY value guns, to the exclusion of all else, including people, and actual safety - in this case, global safety. They have taken a pro-terrorist position.

In the video, below from the Daily Show, this is evident in the pro-ivory importation/ pro-terrorist position.

Where is the connection?
Elephant ivory taken by terrorist poachers is funding anti-American and other terrorist acts, including attacks like the one on the shopping mall in Kenya.
As noted by Think Progress:

NRA Campaigns Against The Plan To Save The World’s Elephants
...While many people would make the mistake of assuming that this was about helping save endangered elephants, the NRA understands what the real motivation is. “This is another attempt by this anti-gun Administration to ban firearms based on cosmetics and would render many collections/firearms valueless,” the NRA said in its call to arms. “Any firearm, firearm accessory, or knife that contains ivory, no matter how big or small, would not be able to be sold in the United States, unless it is more than 100 years old. This means if your shotgun has an ivory bead or inlay, your revolver or pistol has ivory grips, your knife has an ivory handle, or if your firearm accessories, such as cleaning tools that contain any ivory, the item would be illegal to sell.”
For that reason, the NRA implores its members to flood the White House and Congress with phone calls and emails to “let them know you oppose the ban on commercial sale and trade of legally owned firearms with ivory components.” That desire to resell old — but not antique — weaponry clearly is more important to the NRA than preventing the looming extinction of the species — which is linked closely to the skyrocketing demand for ivory. “In 2013 alone an estimated 30,000 African elephants were killed for their ivory, more than 80 animals per day,” Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week.
The commercial ivory ban is only part of a new National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking announced at the same time as the embargo, which prioritizes “strengthening domestic and global enforcement; reducing demand for illegally traded wildlife at home and abroad; and strengthening partnerships with international partners, local communities, NGOs, private industry, and others to combat illegal wildlife poaching and trade.” In that vein, the United States has been leading the charge in persuading countries around the world to destroy their stockpiles of intercepted ivory, annihilating six tons of it last November. Since then, Togo, China, and France have also followed suit and destroyed seized contraband of their own.
Aside from the conservation concerns, which the NRA doesn’t seem moved by, poaching is increasingly being viewed as a national security issue for the United States. In an interview last year, Robert Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, said ivory had become a “conflict resource.” An Enough Project report from last year also found that Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has begun poaching ivory from elephant tusks to fund the group’s activities, which include abducting children and forcing them into sex slavery.

Conservative values, pro-gun values, are failed values; conservative and pro-gun thinking is failed thinking. Neither the values, nor the abbreviated and short-sighted selfish positions make anyone more safe, or in a better world.

40 comments:

Do you dumb ass liberals ever think? Why don't you start a campaign against orchestras?Oh! Never mind, you already did.http://www.americanorchestras.org/advocacy-government/travel-with-instruments/endangere

Or how about the antique business, or art collectors.And what do you wanna do with ivory when you find a ton of it? Destroy it.

You dumb asses believe every cock-eyed story the lying government tells you. Make yourselves useful and get those bastards hung that were shooting spaghetti up peoples' asses at Gitmo. But hell no, you'd rather waste your time going after guitarists who use ivory nuts and guns with ivory handles.

Orlon fluff for brains, you have yet to demonstrate a factual inaccuracy in anything we 'liberals' have written here -- unlike the routine factual debunking we do on the epic fact failure that is conservatism.

No one has started a campaign against orchestras.

Or the antique businesses, or art collectors.

And yes, by destruction of ivory, it puts a dent in the trafficking of it -- and those who invested in it LOSE.

I agree with you that we should be prosecuting those who committed war crimes, beginning with Dubya and his sidekick Cheney, but not giving them the death penalty -- maybe life imprisonment somewhere deep, dark and federal, and/or maybe stripping them of their citizenship and benefits of federal pensions, etc.

It is not, however, as you mistakenly posit (as usual), an either/or choice.

We could go after the torturers AND still act to interdict the illegal ivory trade that benefits terrorists.

Guitarists use ivory nuts? No. Have you been drinking again while commenting, Orlon? And yes, it makes sense to stop the sale of non-antique firearms with ivory handles.

There IS a war by the government on orchestras. Just because you don't know it doesn't make it any less true:Stringent new rules in the USA outlawing the selling, transporting and ‘owning with intent to sell’ of ivory may be good news for elephants, but they have serious implications for musicians. The Budapest Festival Orchestra had to borrow bows from New York musicians after their own were impounded at JFK Airport last month.

Jesus Christ, even the commie NPR knows about this.http://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300267040/musicians-take-note-your-instrument-may-be-contraband

So we need to make more crimes to throw people in jail who sell property they own? Whether or not a spoon with an ivory handle gets sold at a garage sale doesn't bring any elephants back, and it affects a lot more than just gun owners. As usual, you guys have a tendency to want to take it out on the wrong people.

A couple years back I bought an old pool cue at an estate auction. Only after taking it home and examining it I realized it has an ivory ferrule. I also found out it’s worth a couple grand while I only paid $40 for it, so I might want to cash it out at some point. Does it really hurt terrorists if I were to go to prison under these new rules? Or the widow of the estate, or the auction house? I would call us the wrong people to punish because none of us are terrorists or poachers.

Dog gone: “It's not about bringing back elephants, it IS about making the poaching of the ones remaining unprofitable.”

No. Restricting the market of old ivory is going to make new ivory more profitable- which hurts living elephants.

Penalties are up to a year in jail. If you don't think people should go to jail for these types of things, then stop supporting laws that define the punishment as jail time. I keep telling Mike this.

Dog gone, there is an illegal ivory trade, and a legal ivory trade. If you shut down the legal trade, what do you think that does to the illegal market? They covered this in your economics 101 class- probably in the first week.

It would be easy enough to draft a bill, like the old one, with a cut off date that allowed those items already possessed to be sold but forbade the import or sale of any new items with ivory. After all, those knives with ivory handles have already been made--their resale does nothing to finance terrorism or kill elephants--only the new items do that.

Imagine, a solution that deals with the problem of poaching and also the concerns of people already in possession of valuable property that doesn't fund terrorism and poaching--a win win. Of course, that would require dog gone to agree to something that makes conservatives happy, and we can't have that.

A so sad anonymous -- but what you omit is that your solution isn't really a solution.

Rather it fails to deal with the issue that very few of those items newer than the established antique date have a verifiable or valid provenance. That makes it all too easy to continue to sell NEW ivory items as if they were older.

THAT is the reason for the cutoff where it is -- and no, it is not only conservatives who own valuable property that is affected. Further, so long as trade in existing ivory is profitable the market for illegal ivory will remain profitable as well.

The US is second behind Asia (mostly China) as a market for illegal ivory, with the worst trade in illegal ivory taking place in NYC.

Once again, you fail to correctly define or identify the problem and fail in understanding the solution, and lack any knowledge of the details that are pertinent.

Yawn. More proof by assertion and going after things I didn't say. I never claimed that conservatives were the only ones with valuable property affected by this.

As for your comment on proof of provenance, do you know how the current system works? The only real ivory I've seen outside museums was on some bagpipes. The owner had papers showing the provenance which he kept with the pipes. If a new law is to be passed, it is possible to set a new cutoff date, allow people to get papers for the ivory they currently own, and not issue papers after that date--assume newer items are from poachers.

As for your comments about profitable trade in legal ivory making the trade in illegal ivory profitable, that's not how markets work. There is a demand for ivory, and unless that is dealt with, the illegal trade will continue, just as it did with alcohol, drugs, etc.

By the way, dog gone, did you ever follow that URL back and check on the science behind that other video? Or are you still convinced that Laci knows more about astronomy than such pesky things as star charts?

The reason I did not was that what Laci posted was somewhat similar to the annual lecture given by the famous astronomy professor, Karlis Kaufmanis, that I had the privilege of hearing on multiple occasions.

And yes, I'm familiar with star charts. You? How much coursework in astronomy have you had?

Hmm, seems that you missed the fact that I wasn't arguing against solstices or some of the other true statements in that video, but against a demonstrably false statement about the sun hanging on the southern cross for three days around the solstice.

But sure, demand I pull out my bona fides and prove how many astro classes I had, and use those demands to ignore the fact that the video had a glaring flaw in it.

Orlon fluff for brains -- you are as usual amused and find ironic things which are not.

The bullet holed pennies are art objects - or did you not catch that -- as are many of the items of ivory. And this is the BAD pennies award, as in not in tact or in original condition, given for being bad in some way.

And apparently you cannot count, as there are more than two pennies shot full of holes.

I actually agree with TS that the laws should allow for the continuing ownership of any ivory products already held as long as there is a strict prohibition of importing more ivory and the creating of any new pistol grips or knife handles, etc. But, I cannot believe anyone would truly accept the NRA claim that it's a conspiracy to take guns away from people. The issue is so much bigger than the petty concerns of gun owners.

Don't go agreeing with me too much. The proposed changes do allow continued possession, just not a change in possession (specifically sales). My complaints are about more innocuous crime creation, shifting the burden of proof to the accused (it's up to you to prove your ivory is more that 100 years old), and the easy of which someone could break the law and not even know it.

As I said, the issue is much bigger that the petty concerns of gun owners and other collectors of ivory. It's about the possible extinction of elephants. It's about a funding source for terrorist groups in Africa. So you can't sell or give away your ivory products any longer, what an onerous restriction. You will let us know when someone is thrown in the slammer for innocently violating this law, won't you TS?

You will let us know when someone is thrown in the slammer for innocently violating this law . . .

A just law cannot be 'innocently violat[ed]." Any law worthy of respect can only be violated by people acting harmfully.

By the way, calling this latest step in the Obama regime's War on Orchestras a "law" is giving it a bit too much deference, isn't it, since this is actually a new "rule," put in place without even the thin veneer of legitimacy of Congressional involvement?

So that magically happens by changing a rule? A rule on selling old ivory no less. Don't they have to enforce it in order to at least pretend it is doing something? But then you tell me no one will go to jail for this, and tell me that I am being a whiner for complaining about the new crimes created by the rule change.

C'mon, guys, isn't that a pretty small-minded and egocentric position for the NRA to take? Can't you admit that at least?

Nope.

As Anon states, the ostensible intent of the ban could be just as well met with a much more narrowly tailored, much less intrusive law. The only logical conclusion is that the ostensible intent of the ban is much different from the far more sinister actual intent.

Kurt,I don't know about you and the others, but I have seen very few guns with real ivory on them. I don't think that the intent here is to adversely affect gun owners. Instead, I think we have two forces pushing for this type of law.

One is the camp of people like dog gone who want the overbroad law because they think that it is the Only way to stop the ivory trade. I don't know if a similar group existed before prohibition, but if they did they would have been fighting against any allowance of alcohol for sacramental uses and industrial uses: "We must stamp it all out to get rid of the market!" This camp has, at least, thought through why they want such a broad law, even if I don't find their reasoning compelling.

The other camp, which I think are more numerous, are those who are too lazy or too dumb to be able to figure out how to write a more narrowly tailored law. This probably includes most of the politicians in this country; these are the type who see the law as a sledgehammer and everything as a spike to be pounded in without any finesse.